0:00 all right this is why your sales pipeline is all stopped up um normally 0:05 we've got chris d'Eon and randy gerson on here with me but today you just get me 0:10 that's good because most people say they want more of me now i'm just kidding they don't uh randy is actually um not feeling very 0:18 well and chris is busy with a client webinar um 0:23 so let's get to it this is really all about 0:28 drano for your sales pipe okay um so we're gonna do 0:34 question questions and answers at the end if you have questions that come up during the 0:40 presentation just type them into the chat box i'll get to them at the end we've got this uh exclusive report it's 0:47 exclusive because i made it uh 21 ways to fix b2b marketing sales 0:52 pipeline stoppages we'll give you that if you stay till the end 0:58 otherwise you're out of luck and um there will be a recording for this we don't play that game where we're 1:04 like maybe if we don't if we say there's no replay they'll show up you know we don't do that we'll um make sure you guys can get 1:11 access to that and all of our other webinars um but of course you won't get the fancy download and you won't get to 1:17 ask any questions here so uh who are we well randy's not here but 1:23 he's a guy he's the guy that runs gerson and associates he's a sales guy that knows marketing 1:29 worked with a bunch of cool companies 30 years in marketing 35 years in sales he was the number two xerox rep in the 1:35 us and number one in the west at one point so everything he's done with sales informs what we do and what we do for 1:41 our clients also a marketing professor at sdsu along with chris and i'm more of a marketing guy that 1:46 knows sales um so that's partly why we deal with the entire pipeline work with a bunch of 1:52 clients uh 23 years in marketing 12 years in sales wrote a number of books including linkedin for business and that 1:59 is way and way more than you need to know about me um so what we're going to talk about today we're going to talk about what is 2:06 the marketing and sales pipeline what are those 21 things that block it and then b2b drano how do we get that 2:13 flowing again and then the q a of course so overall marketing sales pipeline you 2:19 know there's a lot of different diagrams on this kind of stuff but generally speaking you go from a 2:24 marketing qualified lead to getting replies and getting sales qualified leads 2:30 then you get interest where they're ready to talk to you and if it's an sql you're ready to talk to them because 2:36 they're a fit for you right then you develop that sale follow-up all the stuff you need to do to get to the point 2:42 where they sign the contract and they send you money but we can talk in more detail too about 2:48 we've gone over the the marketing funnel on other webinars we can also talk about the sales 2:54 part of the things we have uh interest development and committed and so that's things like making sure you're 3:00 talking to the right decision maker exploring their pain points and needs and do those fit with what you offer 3:06 what's their current situation what's the size and scope of the opportunity what is the problem the need you need to 3:12 be able to state that at some point in the sales process so that they feel heard and you know that you're giving them something that fits right 3:18 then gain agreement validate what's the perceived value that they're when they're saying like they're looking 3:24 at you and saying what is the value here do they see it um and then you you 3:31 contrast the current situation versus where they're going to go um there's a price point that comes into 3:37 that and you may negotiate and then you ask for the order and close 3:42 so there's a lot of steps just even in the sales funnel right a lot of stuff that can go wrong so 3:49 going back to the beginning of the marketing funnel we've got 21 different blockages they've never heard of you you 3:54 have a boring website they contacted you but you didn't respond your forms aren't working 4:00 you may respond too slowly and we think you know you should get back to people within a few hours you know definitely 4:07 the same day uh some people get back in 15 minutes and then you have like people are like 4:13 wow you guys are great and you have a better chance of getting the sale 4:18 outbound targeting might be wrong your messaging might suck people you run a webinar but people 4:24 forget about it people are too busy to meet they don't know why they should meet with you 4:29 you get an appointment but they don't get reminded of it there's some kind of technical error you might have the the 4:34 wrong person they might not have a budget they don't see the need there's no urgency 4:40 a committee has to decide um you don't schedule the next appointment 4:45 after your current appointment you don't give them enough information there's no automation helping you with the follow-up you're not nurturing quickly 4:51 enough and then there are just a ton of other delays that can happen so you can see what we're up against you 4:58 know this is one of the reasons why people have so much trouble with both lead gen and sales there's a lot of 5:03 steps that have to happen for you to be successful so let's get in to the details what are 5:10 the solutions for these things well um if they've never heard of you or they 5:16 don't hear about you often enough that's a problem um we think about ourselves and our own companies all the 5:22 time and other people are not doing that essentially you have to assume they haven't heard from you they've 5:28 forgotten about you you have to that's why people do content marketing they're always out there that's another reason why we do surround 5:34 sound marketing which can leverage content or just copywriting so 5:40 surround sound what we do if you haven't heard it before we surround the prospect on multiple channels because everybody has different 5:46 preferred channels these days so we'll do things like linkedin email ringless voicemail we might do advertising for 5:53 some clients we do webinars we recommend that as part of the linkedin strategy and then we'll 5:58 do outbound calling uh both to cold call cold calling and to leads and and for 6:04 following up which is uh some people try to go completely digital these days and that's a mistake 6:11 um we even sometimes do direct mail which is not on there so all that stuff surrounds the prospect 6:16 and then we also we don't just go after that decision maker we go after the influencers of the decision too 6:22 which means you know three or four people around them right and we have uh we've gone into more depth on that on a 6:27 previous webinar blockage boring website a lot of people have boring websites 6:34 especially in b2b right because you know b2b marketers are not known for being extremely creative 6:39 um so bringing a little creativity and flair to your to your branding and your approach can 6:47 help you stand out um you know unless you're going after you know let's say you're going after 6:52 government and it's it's maybe they feel like they trust you more if you're boring but 6:58 uh you want to have value based design which means you know what are your corporate values and how 7:06 do so for example for gerson and associates we have trust impact and adaptability 7:11 and then we have to ask ourselves like what does a trusted website look like 7:16 what does a high impact website look like what what font looks trustworthy 7:22 high impact and flexible so that kind of design helps create 7:28 not just a a good brand but one that's unified around what you provide and what your customers value better copywriting 7:36 you can never you can never study copywriting enough um and you have to practice it a lot it's 7:44 just like any kind of creative endeavor there are a lot of principles and 7:49 it needs a lot of practice so this is something i find that um people don't value 7:56 the the impact of copywriting but because when i started doing marketing i started doing google marketing and ads i 8:03 saw immediate impact right if you change this word you get you know this much lower roi 8:10 right you get this this many fewer sales um so just for example 8:16 when you change the and spelled out a and d to an ampersand my finding was that it always performed 8:22 poorly right and you're saving space because it's very little space but you lost 8:28 money you lose money over it right having video really helps everybody knows that should be working on your 8:33 video now this one is really basic 8:38 um when people fill out a form who's monitoring that and replying right and 8:44 again you need to do it fast so you gotta have people monitoring and following up daily 8:52 the form doesn't work and you don't realize it i have to confess i hate talking about my mistakes but one time i 8:59 spent about twenty four thousand dollars on google ads and my form wasn't working and i didn't 9:05 realize it i i was doing too many things i was busy it really taught me a lesson that you know you need to be on top of 9:11 things you need to be able to monitor what's happening and if things aren't right you need to really investigate big 9:18 time um you can't just you know be like oh i guess i guess they're not interesting or 9:23 we're not doing all markets or whatever it could just be something basic like a broken form right so always test your 9:29 forms if you're not seeing leads slow follow-up on leads 9:35 i've got the snail in the sloth and the turtle that are very very cute i would say that the snail is not as cute but 9:42 anyway they're all slow and you don't want to be slow following up on your leads 9:47 automations can help with this there are a lot of things in in crms that you can program for certain types of responses 9:54 and triggers that's going to vary with which crm you're using but you need to make somebody accountable too you know 10:01 for every step of our our funnel we've got what you need to do and who's 10:06 responsible for it just like a project management situation whose job is it to 10:11 follow up what's the follow-up process and is it working 10:16 outbound target might be wrong you should never shoot babies in the face not a good idea but um if you're off 10:22 target that can that can happen so the thing is when you start out a lot of times you have very fixed ideas about 10:28 who your target is and you may or may you might be wrong basically you may or may not be right 10:34 um and the way you learn that is by sending messages right you you start 10:39 with your best guess this is how we do digital marketing we start with our best guess and we call it a guest because we're open-minded because we want to we 10:46 want to improve so you need to just get out there and and send messaging out to people and see 10:52 what happens right you need to do as good a job as you can in the beginning with your copywriting and everything else but you're going to 10:59 learn a lot now you don't want to be boring or look like spam obviously 11:05 people are busy these days they're distracted they're looking for something you know we're we're just distractible 11:10 and our devices are making us even more distractible you have to stand out right you have to grab attention if you don't 11:17 get somebody's attention you can't do anything with them so you also can't when when 90 000 people 11:23 are are messaging people on linkedin about the kind of services we provide you can't 11:30 look the same you can't you can't look at it and read it so so you need to study the competition and look at what 11:36 is boring about them look at what think about what turns you off you know just when you're reading the message what 11:43 how did it affect you and how can you change that effect right this is all uh a copywriting thing again 11:50 um you know you you need to study copywriting so that you know the basics like benefits versus features 11:57 unique selling proposition etc there's a whole bunch of of stuff to 12:02 it so copywriting is key and starting off the beginning too sometimes you'll 12:08 notice in an email you get a little preview or in linkedin there might be a little preview what how many characters 12:13 do you get there and what can you put there to get them to click on it right that's the first thing they see 12:20 okey-dokey blockage prospects forget to go to webinar you know your webinar show 12:25 up rates could be anywhere from you know ten percent to sixty five percent 12:31 depending on what you do um and so you gotta automate reminders send calendar invites is another thing we do 12:38 um you know you're definitely going to see a lower attendance rate on on linkedin promoted stuff than than 12:44 through email and you can follow up with the ringless voicemails as well 12:49 yes so there's a lot of things you want to do to make sure they remember especially if you're you know we find with linkedin and we'll get in more into 12:55 this in a future webinar that it can take weeks to get through all the people you want to invite to a webinar and then 13:01 three weeks later who remembers that they signed up to this webinar online 13:06 on linkedin and linkedin's not sending them a reminder most of the time we haven't seen one on our site 13:13 so you got to do something else to remind them and get them on there 13:18 now prospects if they say they're too busy sure they might be really busy they 13:24 might be at an inflection point where their their business is really growing and they haven't been able to delegate 13:29 enough or whatever right but you have to to make sure that 13:37 they need what you provide right there's a fit um when you do ban you know budget 13:43 authority needs timeline you have to find that need right away or 13:48 they're not going to be that interested even when you're doing the sdr stuff before you get a meeting right 13:54 but again copywriting you know to really express 13:59 those things in a compelling way that's going to have to be based on the research you've done on them 14:06 and any questions you're able to get answered in the sdr process sorry if you 14:11 don't know what sdr is sales development rep so the stuff between you know marketing and getting a reply and then 14:17 actually getting a meeting and in some cases qualifying them for an account executive to be on the meeting 14:24 that's sdr stuff and so you got to look for the need you got to be interesting 14:31 or else they're not going to want a meeting don't see a reason to meet with you this is a very similar 14:37 thing have you figured out what their real problems are what's their number one problem what what's their number one goal what 14:43 are they working on and then which of your services are going to solve that problem or get them 14:49 you know down the field um personalizing the sdr approach is really important we find that one of the biggest keys to the 14:55 sales process is rapport and that that you know creating rapport with someone will not get you a sale if 15:02 there's not a fit or a need but being the one that stands out and gets the sale 15:08 that is in large part about the rapport that you build and that's just part of managing clients 15:14 well right the more they like you the more rope they're going to give you because you're eventually going to make 15:19 a mistake you know so it's important for customer retention as well personalized you know this this is the 15:27 real person in front of you put yourself in their shoes prospects are not getting appointment 15:34 reminders they're no showing sometimes when you're your show up rate for appointments or 15:40 for webinars is low you may have a tech problem again never 15:45 never assume the tech is working always check it and especially in a larger organization 15:52 you'd be surprised how many times or maybe you wouldn't how many times uh we have something working for like a year 15:57 or two years and then all of a sudden somebody changed it right somebody did something and they didn't realize the 16:03 impact of what they're doing or they created a new website and they didn't have the old stuff from the old website 16:09 in the new website all kinds of stuff can go wrong so always check your tech 16:14 now spending a lot of time on the wrong person organization you can build great rapport uh with someone who has absolutely no 16:22 influence and that's not going to help you right or you spend you know three meetings really informing and convincing 16:28 this one person and then they tell you you know what i've got to put this to the committee you know or there's two other people involved in the decision 16:34 you you know classic sales advice is find out who's involved in the decision early in the process right and then try 16:42 to get them onto those calls that can be difficult but it's worth a try and it's it's going to save you a 16:48 lot of time um you know you waste a lot of time on somebody with no influence and and you 16:54 could have been talking to somebody else right um and you can do this when you first 17:00 set that first meeting and you're doing sdr you could be doing this on linkedin or email or something else like that you 17:05 can say oh okay is there anybody else we should invite that's going to be involved in making this decision 17:11 and that way you at least you may at least get that information even if you can't get them on that call 17:18 blockage they don't have a budget or not big enough budget um 17:24 you know you can try to size people before you talk to them by looking at 17:29 linkedin how many employees do they have what kind of information's out there on crunchbase and other databases about 17:35 their revenue and things like that um and you know depending on the cost of 17:41 your services pricing is a whole other topic right what should your price be but um if you're if you're trying to 17:48 stretch and sell things for a higher um fee so that you can cover all your operations and profit and all that stuff 17:55 then you may run into some price resistance and i will tell you it's a red flag 18:01 early on if somebody's talking about price right away number one they've commoditized you they think they 18:06 can get the same thing from somebody else and then so you haven't had a chance yet to show why you're different 18:12 or better especially for them so that so now they're just going to compare people on 18:18 price never a good thing to do and and in sales you're always trying to avoid that 18:23 um you know the the companies that don't ask about price and there's a good chance that it's not 18:30 a factor for them right and so um what you can do we try to put it to the 18:36 end after we've done a scope like what are we actually doing for you like i don't know what it's going to cost until 18:42 i know what we're doing for you right um but we try to we try to put it at the end if they really insist we'll we'll 18:49 say oh well you know all of our clients are paying us 18:54 at least in the low five figures a month right and that gives them an idea that may help you eliminate that person you know 19:01 ban budget authority need timeline you've eliminated them on the basis of budget so you don't need to waste any 19:06 more time on this person right and they don't need to waste any more you don't need to waste any more of their time right so good stuff 19:15 if they don't see a need for your services well let's go back um to 19:22 do they did they say they had a problem that you can solve um how important is that problem uh to 19:28 them you know what are their goals can you help with that how important are those to them and then paint the picture like 19:34 what what's gonna happen if you don't do this and what's going to happen if you do right what's your competition going to 19:40 do while you're not doing it okay and then just make sure you've been clear on the fact that you can solve it 19:48 that they can see that you can solve that they agree that you could solve it right get through all that stuff you got a much better chance 19:54 um they don't have any urgency then again what's it going to cost them 20:00 if they delay you know you can paint a picture of how 20:05 their competition is catching up or getting ahead there's usually there's usually evidence 20:11 in the marketplace for that kind of thing so look for it talk about it be specific 20:16 and then you can propose a trial period too because people may not want to bite off on this you know year-long contract 20:22 or whatever it is some organizations require that and that's that's fine but 20:28 if you can give them you know a reasonable taste you know dip their toes in maybe it's three months 20:34 whatever it is um it's long enough for you to do show them you can do a good job 20:40 um but it makes it easier for them to commit all right let me just check the chat 20:46 here okay cool um again committee has to decide not just 20:52 one person you could be dealing with the wrong person like we talked about earlier you could be talking to only one part of 20:59 the committee as we know committee sales can be very difficult 21:05 um it is much harder to to convince a group especially if you're not the one talking 21:11 to them you know the one of the worst situations that happens a lot is where you've convinced this one person they're 21:16 like okay cool send me something let me go present that to you know my whoever or to the committee 21:23 and at that point if you have the guts to say it you could say well um i sell this all the time i'm 21:31 really good at selling this you just learned about it so i don't i don't know if maybe 21:37 you should let me help you sell it uh because we know how to talk about it we know 21:42 what questions to ask all that kind of stuff to say like just let me be an ally for you in this and help you sell it to 21:48 them or to the committee um that's gonna get you a lot further 21:54 um here's a nitpick that that randy and i have all the time which is 22:00 and and and it's funny because we we have the advantage of we're we're talking about better sales for them so 22:05 we can say like if they object to like setting that next appointment we can say um well you know 22:12 it's just the best sales practice for us to make sure we've said it that way the deal moves forward and stuff and i'm 22:18 sure you'd want us to do that with with the people we're working on for you if we work together right 22:23 so at the end of the appointment you say let's get out our calendars and set that next meeting right 22:30 sometimes they'll be like well can you just send me something first you know and you'll be like oh i'd love to show 22:35 that to you you know make sure you know what it is um what do you want to see right and oh you want to see some client 22:41 case studies cool um when can we get together to go over that right because if you send it to them it 22:47 goes down this black hole um they may you know just be like brushing you off 22:52 but at least this helps you see if that's happening and maybe have a chance to change it so we don't send materials 23:00 we set another meeting to go over those materials 23:06 not getting enough info from you to go forward this is a very individual thing for each 23:12 company like what do you need to tell them what do all your your prospects ask for 23:19 um just make sure you know what that is if you haven't developed the presentation you don't have to do a powerpoint on a 23:25 on a on a sales call but if you haven't developed the presentation you don't know 23:31 all the information you need to say right and then some people are way more visual than verbal i think it's funny that you 23:38 know my my example of visual communication is actually verbal but that was the best picture i could 23:44 find um so some people they don't want to see 100 words on a slide right most people 23:50 don't some people are auditory some people are kinesthetic just make sure that you have 23:56 done some visual communication of what you're talking about 24:02 all right lack of lead in sales automation you know we're not living in the 1950s or whatever that is on the left 24:10 um we still use phones but uh you can use you know power dialers right 24:17 we have all these crms that people don't know how to use and don't want to use but if you if you use them you get 24:24 better results you're more competitive you're more organized you don't miss things it's very important for follow-up 24:30 right because if you got to get a hold of some somebody seven or eight times and you're using an excel spreadsheet or 24:37 a google sheet how are you tracking that and what's reminding you to do it so 24:43 make sure you've got some kind of crm and and take the time it's it can be 24:48 really annoying but take the time to learn how to use it and make sure everybody's using it make sure the leaders at the top of your company are 24:55 using it because you know if they're not doing it why should i do it right 25:00 again with the snail and the turtle and the sloth when you get info to people slowly 25:07 and when you get contracts to people slowly you have a much higher chance of losing the deal 25:13 speed is one of the most important things in that sales pipeline as you saw there are a lot of steps that we got to 25:18 go through a delay of two days at each step we were talking about what now we've got a month-long sales 25:25 an extra month on our sales cycle so we can automate things uh we also have to have accountability 25:32 um one thing you may know about accountability is never assign something to two people 25:38 because they'll both think the other person's gonna do it so one person has to be accountable 25:44 and you got to get that information out as quickly as possible the other thing is psychological you know when people are interested that 25:50 interest can fade even if they would still be interested in principle it fades and when people 25:57 are excited about those results and motivated to sign again that can disappear you know 26:04 a lot of distractions these days all kinds of delays hey here's our little pitch um 26:10 hire us [Laughter] we believe in not ever being the bottleneck for anybody 26:17 um so when when prospects ask us like how long is it going to take to set it up 26:22 the first thing i think is well like depends on how fast you move right uh because as soon as we have access to 26:28 something we're moving on it right um and and so a lot of those delays and 26:33 things that you know it eventually takes it took an extra month like to to get the leads uh started well 26:40 you know it there were 10 steps in the setup and it and it took a lot of time so 26:45 um you never want to have an external vendor that isn't fast that's our opinion you 26:51 know for us trust uh impact and adaptability 26:56 uh one of our key values is speed but it it falls under 27:01 all three of those right can't have impact without speed um 27:06 and if you're slow people start to think you're incompetent they don't trust you okay 27:12 so those are the 21 blockages and the stales pipeline drano 27:19 um anybody got any questions 27:26 [Laughter] i should have made up some fake questions right 27:32 um well i must just be amazing good email subject lines for clickability okay oh 27:38 great thanks guys we got another one ai playing the sales okay so what are good email subject lines for 27:45 clickability well any system that allows you to personalize like you put the first name in there you put the company name 27:51 um you know the other thing that works really well is is basically what we would call click 27:57 bait or like a curiosity thing where you say this and they have to open up the email to see what this is so for example 28:05 um [Music] people uh people at companies like 28:10 their company name love this right what is this i gotta open now i got a 28:17 high open rate you know i at least got into the next step um it's different for for everybody there's 28:24 there's tons of of formulas out there um we we always 28:29 customize them you know and um putting you know like a benefit 28:34 or you need your unique selling proposition in if you can fit it in is good uh but personalization goes a 28:41 long way um happy to talk to you about that more in a more specific situation 28:47 um how does a.i play into sales well 28:54 i talked to a guy the other day and it was so funny he was like um he said i hate it when companies talk 29:00 about a.i because did i miss the singularity you know his point being like is there true 29:05 artificial intelligence there's not but but every company now talks about having 29:11 ai in the sense of what is your technology that you're doing some automation with right like this my 29:17 hubspot can't you know make me a meal or and i can't fall in love with somebody 29:22 but it can automate some of the stuff that humans normally have to do 29:27 um so we're getting a little robotic right we're getting a little bit robotic with the follow-up and of course the 29:33 danger of being robotic is not being human so what we do is we do a combination of 29:39 what we call ai and hi so ai is our automations hi is our human intervention right our 29:47 human interaction so we um you know we create all of these uh 29:53 messages and stuff that go out at different stages and then we also create messages for our sales development reps 30:00 so that they know what they can say uh depending on what the prospect is saying 30:06 we also make sure that you know like randy always talks about how he created a five-page document mine's 30:13 not that long but this is how how randy talks so if you have someone like helping you with your linkedin 30:19 um what how do they appear to have your personality right if it's randy they're 30:24 probably talking about surfing you know so that's in there and that's an example of how we do that 30:31 um here's another uh question when a lead says no thanks we are good do you 30:36 give up or try harder um i think this is part of the same 30:42 question we sell digital marketing with some pos integration and sometimes they 30:49 think they can do it without us and say no thanks have our own system how do we show we're different or at least one 30:54 meeting or is that not a lead worthwhile well you know sometimes when people say 31:00 no no thanks it depends on what stage you're at like if if you're just connecting to somebody on linkedin and 31:05 then you say here's what we do could that help you and they're like no thanks um you got a couple options at the very 31:12 least we like to have the sdrs say okay cool um but if you ever have a 31:18 problem with blackboard blank or you want blank you know come back to us uh and then you 31:24 know follow with that person in a month or three months or whatever you can always go back to people that 31:30 weren't ready and see if they are ready now when it comes to like they have a 31:36 system and you have something better uh i'll say in general i got this from from russell brunson is i think 31:43 a really great insight it's it's easier to go in and put something there that's not there 31:48 at all when they have a complete gap they need something right once they've got something 31:53 the heat is off their their feet right um so they 31:59 have to say like how much is this how much better is going to be versus how much of a hassle is it going 32:05 to be to switch over and this is working they say this will work but do we trust 32:10 them right so it requires a mix of trust and then 32:16 what i would call a copywriting to where you have to have something written out that's really 32:21 clear about why yours is different and better and what what's the cost of the way 32:27 they're doing it now even they don't see it what's the future cost what's the opportunity cost 32:32 um and and can you even quantify that right you get to the point where you've got case studies where it's like you 32:38 know this uh did take you know three months to integrate or however whatever how long it takes you to set up 32:45 uh it took 90 days it took 60 days to set up but it 32:50 led to uh you know 3x on their roi or whatever whatever it 32:56 is um you have to you have to acknowledge there may be pain points for them in 33:01 switching but um have all that stuff written out so that you know it everybody knows it 33:06 when they communicate with people and that should really be like your usp 33:12 and the benefits of that should really be your core message right it's the most important thing that you that you 33:18 communicate how long should we spend on an account before moving on for example i go to 33:24 uh medical doctor accounts weekly for a hospice agency 33:30 well um i do think that that's gonna depend on how many leads 33:37 you have to work um but i think also once you have some success you should have some benchmarks 33:43 like you know on average we can we can sell this md um 33:48 i'm assuming it's a doctor we can we can get an account here uh within 33:53 five or six visits whatever it is right you're gonna have to track that and go back and look at it um 33:59 and then also you should have some signs like there's sometimes there's red flags and there's also some other 34:05 white flags i don't know there there are signs that they're not going to be a fit and then there are signs that 34:11 they will be right so the process you take them to the things that they say back um 34:17 that can help you gauge too whether somebody's truly cold or not the short answer is i can't answer that 34:24 without knowing more about your business but if you track that data you should be able to find a benchmark 34:32 okay so um i'm an account executive but do some prospecting too can be hard to 34:38 balance current accounts and find new ones yes yes yes um most what's the most effective way to 34:45 prospect and find new leads wow that's the 10 million dollar question isn't it um i mean we think 34:51 it's surround sound and automation um so that's that's a big part of it but 34:58 you know you got to be able to you got to nail the entire process you know and and i know we're all a lot of people are 35:04 wearing multiple hats it obviously be ideal if you could just do customer service and not also be in sales but 35:10 then there's like if you don't if you don't do the sales and the continuity then you have an issue sometimes the gap between like the sale and delivery of 35:17 the service um you just have to you just have to you know 35:23 try to create more efficiency in part with automation making sure your processes are nailed down 35:31 and then choose an amount of time i mean i think that's something you definitely want to involve 35:37 leadership with which is like you know what percentage of my time and effort should be on keeping versus 35:43 getting new ones right okay um [Applause] 35:49 i think oh here's another one a lot of questions today that's good 35:54 um let me put this back up my computer freaked out um okay 36:01 uh what's the best way to go around a gatekeeper that is not confident enough to engage the decision maker 36:06 would you recommend starting with decision makers and looping influencers in yeah this is this is an old sales 36:12 question it's been an issue for a long long time there's two basic answers that i 36:18 know one is try to get around them because you can find all that data we have a great data 36:24 source we think is better than zoom info um and then go directly to that person with 36:30 an email or something right so that's that's one thing you can do 36:36 call them etc if if they're really well protected that may not work the other thing you can do is send them lumpy mail 36:42 or some kind of weird direct mail to get some attention uh if it's a really high value account 36:47 it might be worth it for you to send something to them you know um but the other answer is you know 36:54 recruit the gatekeeper that's the test right there of your rapport ability 37:00 with cold calling and um you know there's two major ways to do that one is be a human being 37:07 outgoing positive try to get them talking about other stuff try to get them talking about the 37:13 weather or whatever you know the other way is you know you'll get the ones that are all business 37:19 and you have to have that copywriting stuff you know you need to be able to say in 37:24 one or two sentences this is why you should work with us and if you're not it's 37:29 you're making a mistake you know you don't say that but you have to have that what's your unique selling proposition you maybe you work 37:37 into that some numbers like we're able to help companies like yours achieve a 30 percent more revenue or 30 37:45 more efficiency with blah blah or whatever it is um you got to be able to you got to have an 37:51 elevator pitch that's going to break through that person that's all business and for them to realize oh 37:56 um you know maybe if i don't pass this on i'm messing things up for the company 38:01 right okay cool um 38:07 one more this is great guys thanks for all the questions um [Music] 38:12 kelsey recommends fanatical prospecting by jeb blount that was a good book i've i probably read 38:18 at least 10 or 20 sales books a year there's a lot of them out there and 38:23 they're always going to give you new ideas i try to reread some of them something sometimes you don't get the same impact 38:29 from from rereading but some of them are worth it we should actually do a webinar that's 38:35 all about the best sales books um so how much is too often 38:42 with follow-up how often to bubble up an email when waiting for a decision don't want to come off desperate but don't 38:47 want to drop the ball and lose top of mind yeah 38:52 again i think this will calibrate a little bit but depending on your industry and the and the kind of decision maker 38:59 you're going after um i mean i wouldn't necessarily do it every day 39:06 but it depends on the situation if you're having trouble getting that next meeting once or twice a week might be good the 39:12 other thing is like to do multiple types of contact right like i email you like 39:18 call you and leave a voicemail did you get my email when are we gonna blah blah 39:23 um yeah so and and then linked into like this is a good one like hey i would just 39:29 want to make sure you're getting my emails um you have to have an excuse to to bug 39:36 somebody right um and then you can always if you're having trouble with that you got any content that you can send like you know 39:41 what as we're you know waiting for the next step i thought you might like this article or whatever it is you know this infographic 39:50 uh it's always good to come up with excuses to contact people right like why is this 39:55 guy bothering me you don't want to i'm just following up what's going on not very compelling 40:02 all right cool well i think that's it um 40:07 i hope you guys enjoyed that thanks for all the questions our next webinar is going to be on linkedin events in june 40:13 so keep an eye out for that we'll post that on linkedin and and probably maybe email you about it if we have your email 40:20 um and then we have a calendly ah thank you for putting that in there 40:25 saw if you want to talk to us about us helping you with this kind of stuff for your 40:32 business um please use this calendly link and and we'll talk all right thanks everybody 40:39 appreciate it and have a great day